18 May Ben Cleveland

“Some squirrels in south Georgia, they’ll taste a little bit more nutty. Up here [Baltimore], our acorns and stuff aren’t really as strong as the ones down south. Most of them up here, it just tastes like squirrel. If you put enough seasoning on it, you can make it taste like anything you want it to taste like.”

Ben Cleveland is a football player for the Baltimore Ravens. He comes from Georgia and ate squirrel meat when there wasn’t much else to eat. As he attests, the difference in the taste of the same meat is subtle but significant. Dressed up with enough seasoning (like humans dressed up in costumes and playing different roles), what we experience is the dressing and not the essential meat.

Each of us is who they are but we rarely present ourselves as we are. We dress ourselves up as to how we want to be perceived. Our dressing so disguises who we are that others will see us as they want to see us.